red and dismayed by the lack of guidance and by the shock to
their sense of discipline to be of much use in that battle. Some bodies
of them in both these unhappy divisions arrived in front of Hill 70 at
the very time when the enemy launched his first counter-attack, and
were driven back in disorder... Some days later I saw the 21st Division
marching back behind the lines. Rain slashed them. They walked with bent
heads. The young officers were blanched and had a beaten look. The sight
of those dejected men was tragic and pitiful.

XIV

Meanwhile, at 6 P.M. on the evening of the first day of battle, the
Guards arrived at Noeux-les-Mines. As I saw them march up, splendid
in their height and strength and glory of youth, I looked out for the
officers I knew, yet hoped I should not see them--that man who had given
a farewell touch to the flowers in the garden of our billet, that other
one who knew he would be wounded, those two young brothers who had
played cricket on a sunny afternoon. I did not see them, but saw only
columns of men, staring grimly ahead of them, with strange, unspeakable
thoughts behind their masklike faces.

It was not until the morning of the 26th that the Commander-in-Chief
"placed them at the disposal of the General Officer commanding First
Army," and it was on the afternoon of Monday, the 27th, that they were
ordered to attack.

By that time we had lost Fosse 8, one brigade of the 9th Scottish
Division having been flung back to its own trenches after desperate
fighting, at frightful cost, after the capture of the Hohenzollern
redoubt by the 26th Brigade of that division. To the north of them the
7th Division was also suffering horrible losses after the capture of the
quarries, near Hulluch, and the village of Haisnes, which afterward was
lost. The commanding officers of both divisions, General Capper of the
7th, and General Thesiger of the 9th, were killed as they reconnoitered
the ground, and wounded men were pouring down to the casualty clearing
stations if they had the luck to get so far. Some of them had not
that luck, but lay for nearly two days before they were rescued by the
stretcher-bearers from Quality Street and Philosophe.

It was bad all along the line. The whole plan had gone astray from
the beginning. With an optimism which was splendid in fighting-men and
costly in the High Command, our men had attacked positions of enormous
strength--held by an enemy in the full height of